Feminism, as a political movement aimed at the liberation of women, has long theorized gender not as an innate essence, but as a hierarchical system enforcing women’s subservience. Characterizing certain personality traits – compliance, nurturance, the desire to be pretty or objectified – as ‘natural’ to women, is, according to feminist analysis, a primary mechanism for maintaining gender hierarchy. As a result, many feminists have genuine questions about trans ideology’s assertion that ‘gender identity’ is both natural and universal. It comes perilously close to naturalizing the oppression of women.

This is not trivial, and it needs to be discussed. But it has been decreed that it cannot be discussed, because to discuss it is to ‘deny the right of trans people to exist.’ Trans ideology collapses the fact that trans people exist into the theory of why trans people exist, and judges anyone who questions the theory to be a transphobic bigot intent on denying the very existence of trans people. Indeed, even those trans women who persist in existing despite subscribing to the feminist critique of gender are denounced by many in their community as self-hating or treacherous. This is argument by non-argument, and it functions to close down discourse by rendering feminism’s long-held analysis of gender unsayable.

Stock’s essay was recently signal-boosted by a cis male blogger [i.e., Leiter, who is not a cis male though is a blogger] who is hostile to feminism in the philosophy profession, and who has been linking to essays by cis people (mostly cis men) that debate whether trans women are women. While it is logically possible for something to be both liked by this blogger and helpful to the feminist cause, I am categorically distrustful of anything he endorses.

Let's review some of the ways I've harmed "the feminist cause" over the years:

1. I was the first senior male figure in the profession to call attention (on this blog) to the sexual harassment problem in philosophy, way back in 2009 (I "signal-boosted" the problem, shall we say), and I've given extensive coverage to these issues over the years.

2. I also "signal-boosted" the movement for the APA to really enforce its existing policies against anti-gay discrimination--it started with this post in 2007, but really took off after this post and the subsequent petition. See also here and here .

3. I exposed the "Climate for Women" hoax perpetrated by Linda Alcoff and colleagues, who were trying to recommend to female students graduate programs with documented sexual harassment problems.

Since I first linked to Professor Stock's essays last week, the various more timid philosophy blogs have picked up her articles as well, in many cases allowing comments (including abuse of Professor Stock--in keeping with the usual rules at these famously hypocritical blogs, abuse is always welcome when directed at people with "incorrect" views). Professor Stock has now compiled a set of useful responses to some of the objections and comments over the last week. I commend it to readers interested in these issues, both for the substance of her responses and her emphasis on respect for the dignity and rights of transgender women, though not to the exclusion of the dignity and rights of women.

Another interesting essay by feminist theorist and journalism professor Robert Jensen (UT Austin). Noting that "cisgender" means "people whose internal sense of gender identity matches their biological sex," Professor Jensen explains why he is not at all cisgender:

As a male human, [the culturally dominant] patriarchal conception of masculinity is not my “chosen” identity, nor do I believe it is my fate. As a short, skinny, effeminate child — when I show people my church confirmation picture taken at age 14, they often assume it is a photo of a much younger girl — I never felt very masculine. As an adult with feminist politics, I reject and struggle to overcome the masculinity norms in patriarchy.

You can get a sense of the need some have to indulge in mindless gendered stereotypes from this twitter thread regarding Professor Jensen's earlier essay we noted here. It really should be disqualifying for getting a PhD in philosophy to assert that gender or sex (or race etc.) excludes one from offering reasons in support of a view (especially a perfectly cogent position like Professor Jensen's).

An unrelated oddity about the use of "cisgender": given that 99.7% of the population does not suffer from gender dysphoria, why would one think one needs any special label to describe the statistically normal condition? Add to that the fact that it implies something about men that is often false, for the reasons Professor Jensen identifies, and it seems positively perverse. (The same is true for "cis" women, as one of Professor Stock's original essays correctly pointed out.)

I just wanted to mention that many feminist women have, for a long time, been saying exactly the sorts of things that Stock, Jensen and Kaufman said / are saying, but have been vilified, threatened and marginalised for doing so. It's been frightening to watch the way in which any possibility of discussion on issues that will directly affect women's lives has been completely foreclosed under pain of stiff social penalty. And the speed at which this happened has been incredible. What happened to Tuvel was typical, and she wasn't even taking an opposing view. Many women have been discussing these issues in private, but most are too frightened to speak in public (and not unreasonably so).

The only thing to do is to push ahead with serious philosophical discussion of this and other topics, and, at the same time, to call out the thought police and academic bullies, as we have done many times before and will continue to do.

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY: E-mail me if your comment still has not appeared at the APA site by this evening, and I will collect and post the comments here. Remember the APA site requires a name and e-mail address. (5/15/18 update at 3:20 pm CST: comments have started to appear.)

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MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 9: The APA blog now features a post about this project, which makes clear that this will be another unethical code, intent on violating the academic freedom of scholars and rationalizing the unethical treatment of Prof. Tuvel. Readers should comment at the APA blog. One reader, who wrote me about this, indicated that if this goes forward, they will stop paying APA dues.

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The APA press release is here. The last "ethics code" the APA produced was a joke, which might make one wonder what will result here, especially when the Executive Director of the APA, who is not a philosopher, remarks that, "Recent publishing controversies, as well as a more general awareness of diversity issues in the field, have brought increased attention to publication ethics in philosophy." The release goes on to state that,

Some of the issues that the initiative will address include evolving forms of scholarly misconduct, diversity in citation and engagement practice, varieties of plagiarism, and implicit bias in research, peer review, and editorial practices, as well as correcting the scholarly record when missteps occur. In order to address widespread disagreement about these issues, the grant will bring editors, scholars, and publishers together to develop a set of explicit and clear guidelines.

There have been some major breaches of publication ethics of late (recall the Bruyahaha or the Jenkins-Soble fiascos), but it's very clear that what this is really about (given the repeated references to diversity, and, remarkably, "diversity in citation and engagement practice") is an attempt by the APA to put its imprimatur on the unethical and unprofessional behavior of the Associate Editors of Hypatia during the Tuvel affair.

"How can you be so confident, Brian, that that's the point of this exercise?" a skeptic might ask. Fair question. But please note that, putting aside Ms. Ferrer, three of the five academic members of this committee--Rebecca Kennison, Yannik Thiem, and Adriel Trott--were signatories to the open letter defaming Prof. Tuvel and calling on Hypatia to retract her article. That's right, the majority of this committee supported unethical and unprofessional conduct by Hypatia. And now they will draft a code of publication ethics.

Now in the world of actual professionals, one might have thought having signed on to an unethical attack on another scholar and a call for a journal to behave unprofessionally would disqualify one from participating in crafting a code of publication ethics. But not at the APA: apparently at the APA, it's still an open question, as it is nowhere else in the world (apart from the incoming Board of Hypatia!), whether Hypatia should have withdrawn a peer-reviewed article because it offended some readers.

Enough is really enough. Anyone who pays dues to the APA should stop until some house cleaning is done. And those philosophers with actual ethical standards and professional judgment who are involved with the APA: why are you permitting this to happen?

ADENDUM: Strictly speaking, the Mellon Grant is to the PI at Fairfield University, but the participation and endorsement of the APA's Executive Director and the featuring of this project on the APA website makes clear where this is heading.

Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) discusses the issues in a measured and informative way here and here. Those who recall the reaction to an earlier philosophical discussion of Germaine Greer's views can surmise why so many avoid the topic. But philosophers shouldn't, for reasons Professor Stock addresses.

They're slashing the full-time faculty by 9%, including some "involuntary" terminations. I've heard that Philosophy is likely to fare rather well during this transition, but I don't know details. More information welcome in the comments.

A faculty committee at Catholic University of America this week resisted a controversial cost-cutting proposal that would eliminate 35 full-time professors, including those with tenure.

The report of an ad hoc committee, published late Wednesday night, is a forceful rebuke of key components of a long-simmering layoff plan that has sown division at the university, which is based in Washington, D.C., and was founded by American Roman Catholic bishops.

In its report, which was provided to The Chronicle by a professor, the committee questions whether the university has the authority to lay off tenured faculty members without either cause, a declaration of financial exigency, or the elimination of programs....

Professors at Catholic University, most of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, describe the academic-renewal proposal as a particularly cold instrument that disguises a calculated layoff plan with a lot of high-minded talk about raising the university’s national profile. The provost has pushed back against that sentiment, characterizing the proposal’s critics as a vocal minority.

A key component of the plan mandates higher teaching loads for professors who work exclusively with undergraduates, freeing up those in doctoral and professional programs to teach less. If that comes to pass, consultants told the university, Catholic would have “surplus faculty” in some areas who could be laid off without reducing course offerings or cutting programs.

It's my understanding that this new caste system would benefit the School of Philosophy at Catholic U, which apparently has very close ties to the Catholic Church as well.

Pretty disgraceful, though the Koch Foundation claims it no longer tries to do that. Any such interference violates core academic freedom values, which includes the right of the university to decide on faculty appointments based on discipline-specific standards, not the preferences of external donors. I doubt the Koch Foundation gift to the law school at George Mason involved any such provisions, since the law school at George Mason is so far to the libertarian fringe that most of my libertarian colleagues would be on the left end of their faculty!

...with the utterly predictable results. Legally, this case is as easy as they come: Cal State-Fresno, as a public entity, can not punish her for her constitutionally protected speech on a matter of clear public interest. I assume the university will do exactly nothing as the outcome of its "personnel" process, though they shouldn't even be initiating one. I gather the Cal State faculty are unionized, which should provide an extra layer of protection.

All that being said, one does have to ask: why bother? I say that as someone who thinks the Fresno professor's assessment of the late Mrs. Bush is not far off the mark, even if poorly expressed (such is Twitter, poor expression is the norm). But why bother Tweeting stuff like this? Did it satisfy an important emotional need? Was the goal precisely to create a spectacle? One wonders in a lot of these cases what these folks think they are accomplishing.

All that being said, there is no question this is constitutionally protected speech for which the speaker can not be punished by her public employer.

(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)

UPDATE: Judging from this CHE report, there may be a more serious issue here for which she could face legal liability: namely, giving out a suicide hotline number as her own, with the predictable result that it was swamped with calls from those outraged by her tweets. I do not know, but could imagine, that interfering with a public health service in this way could, in fact, have legal ramifications. She might even face civil liability in the event someone could not get through and ended up killing or hurting themselves--a not impossible scenario. I can understand wanting to divert angry phone calls, but why divert them to a suicide hotline? That's both odd and destructive. (The CHE report also makes clear that the Fresno Administration is without backbone or even knowledge of the law: they're an embarrassment.)

In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, I wonder if you would agree that now is an opportune time to address on your Leiter Reports Blog what to me has long appeared a capitulation by academics to the corporate University so far as concerns our privacy rights.

I imagine many readers will recall the time they were instructed that their University was retiring their in-house email service and contracting it out to Google. This fallen Luddite made the switch kicking and screaming but, alas, it was a futile battle. Fast forward: We now are supplied with an entire Google Suite of products that it is increasingly difficult to avoid (plea to colleagues: please stop sharing files with me on Google Drive!) Admittedly, Google for Education does not annoy us with ads. Whether they provide our information to third-party vendors is to me less clear (here a lawyer’s eye is welcome!) What then is the problem, you ask?

I invite your academic readers to perform the following experiment. Visit http://www.google.com/history or otherwise navigate to the “My Activity” section of your account and, then, to “Activity Controls.” There you may (or may not) be surprised to see that your account has the capacity to track all kinds of activity in which you engage via your Google Suite of products, and that all this activity is archived in this single place. I have two such Google for Education accounts, since I teach at two universities. By default, one account had all of the tracking activity “paused” (my land-grant University of Minnesota, hereafter dearer to my heart). My other account had the defaults set up so that I would have had to affirmatively OPT OUT of certain tracking, among them tracking of my YouTube search history and YouTube watch history. Further, I am aware that designated University administrators have access to faculty GMail via something called a Google Administrative Suite and, presumably, GMail is not the only Google activity to which they have access via their Administrative Suite. As if this were not sufficient to evoke fears of the University as Big Brother, one also finds in the “My Activity” section this chilling statement:

“Activity may be saved from another account if you use a shared device or sign in with multiple accounts. Learn more at support.google.com.”

I assume that although I might be unusual in having two Google for Education accounts, many academics like me have both personal and university GMail accounts. If I understand, the statement above suggests that activity in which I engage via one of those accounts may (if I am simultaneously logged in to another?) find its way to the “My Activity” section of another. At least, I suppose this explains why my Brown.edu Google account tracked the fact that, in addition to a number of philosophy related videos, I have viewed at least one episode of “Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins” (the one where Guy Fieri visits Patti’s Pierogi’s in Falls River! [note to New Englanders: not worth the drive]). This, of course, is a funny example. However, I am aware of a case where a professor’s *personal* GMail somehow ended up in the hands of a university administrator who claims to have delegated access to the professor’s *work* GMail account. Perhaps the Google for Education ship has sailed but I would like to encourage conversation around these issues. I'm way behind the internet privacy curve and have a lot to learn; I suspect other professors do, as well.

I took Professor Mason's suggestion, and performed the experiment, and it was, indeed, eye-opening and not in a good way! Thoughts from readers on these issues?

Since the "blowhard and buffoon" Alan Dershowitz (I here quote one of my liberal, Jewish, very pro-Israel law colleagues!) is back in the news because of his shilling for Trump--the explanation is transparent, since Dershowitz has only one criterion for any position he takes (namely, is it good for Likud)--it's worth recalling that Dershowitz has been a resolute opponent of academic freedom and freedom of expression, most notoriously in the tenure case of Norman Finkelstein at DePaul.

...and of course they aren't satisfied, which should be a warning to any school that thinks of capitulating and substituting juvenile consumerism for academic judgment. This remark by a faculty member is apt:

Meanwhile, defenders of Hum 110 -- which currently begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh and ends with the Bible and Apuleius’ The Golden Ass -- have argued that critics err in transposing modern notions of race into the course, or even misunderstand it altogether.

“The idea that Hum 110 is a ‘white’ course is very strange to me,” Jay Dickson, a professor of English, recently told Reed Magazine. “It presupposes that our contemporary racial categories are timeless.”

I'm not really sure what it means. What would it mean to say "diversity" is "more important" than free speech? Does that mean free speech should be suppressed in order to promote diversity? Or does it mean that institutions should invest more effort and money in promoting diversity than in protecting free speech? Those are very different possibilities. What is clear is that the corporate human resource hacks who invented "diversity" as a value have triumphed even with young people who probably think of themselves as "progressives."

UPDATE: This morning (March 7), the Vice-Chancellor capitulated, sending out a message that said in part, “In light of the depth of feeling of so many colleagues we will convene a special meeting of Council today at noon and will be recommending that Council reverse its response to the UUK survey in line with Congregation’s resolution."

[T]here is no good reason [if God does not exist] to give special protection to religious liberties [as argued by] my former colleagues Brian Leiter ("Why Tolerate Religion?") and John Corvino ("Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination"). Given their atheistic assumptions, they are quite right: James Madison’s arguments for the First Amendment explicitly presupposed the existence of God. In his "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" (1785), Madison wrote, “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent… to the claims of Civil Society.” Our right to religious liberty rests logically on the reality of our supreme duty to God our Creator.

As to the other "scientific" evidence for the existence of the non-existent Being: no comment!

Story here. (Note that he is teaching at a level that is intermediate between American high school and American university education.) We may put to one side his silly rationalization for his anti-gay bigotry, I am curious to know whether (1) CEGEP faculty enjoy academic freedom, (2) whether academic freedom in Canada includes protection for extramural speech (this was clearly extramural speech), and (3) whether hate speech laws in Quebec, or at the federal level, cover the kinds of remarks at issue here (in which case, I assume they trump academic freedom).

Details here. The proposed changes would be fatal to the integrity of the university system in Arkansas; what's worse is if Arkansas is successful in this frontal assault on academic freedom, other state systems will probably follow suit.

The details behind the controversy are described here. I'll return to my own view at the end, but first, my colleague Anton Ford asked me to share this letter from Samantha Eyler, who works (in a non-academic but editorial position) at both the Stigler Center here and ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center. Ms. Eyler writes:

As Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology.

When my objections were overruled, I requested on grounds of ethics to recuse myself from any involvement with the Bannon event. Although Zingales accepted my recusal on its face, within hours he began to instruct me to promote his event-related statements on ProMarket and to provide him with research in advance of the Bannon event. I immediately sought advice from Chicago Booth Human Resources to determine the level of protection the University provides to its staff in such cases, and was informed that, while Bannon and Zingales themselves are protected under the University’s stated principles of freedom of expression, University of Chicago staff are not, and perceived insubordination could be grounds for termination of my employment.

With this information established, it is clear that I can no longer continue to sit on the ProMarket editorial board alongside tenured faculty whose speech is more protected than my own. This fact transparently makes it impossible to debate on equal terms with my board colleagues such urgent matters as our responsibilities as editors in facing the growing threat of white nationalism in America.

For this reason I hereby resign from my post on the ProMarket editorial board and as acting editor-in-chief responsible for content development at ProMarket. I will carry on as the Stigler Center’s senior editor, reporting to Zingales, and as executive editor of ProMarket, reporting to the remaining members of the editorial board. But I am no longer able to undertake content development functions for which lateral equality between editorial board members is a necessary precondition.

I invite the ProMarket board to use this occasion as an opportunity to clarify in a more formal way whether ProMarket is editorially independent of the Stigler Center. And I invite all members of the University of Chicago community to critically assess the merits of a free speech absolutism that has justified the provision of a platform to a famed white nationalist while failing to protect UChicago’s own staff seeking to exercise our right to protest the fact that such a platform has been provided. My situation is only the latest example of the ubiquitous reality in this country whereby the de jure notion of an absolute right to freedom of expression conceals a de facto reality in which the right to free expression of the powerful is enforced at the expense of that of their subordinates.

The last sentence is naive and false, but put that to one side. I agree that in her role as an editor she ought to be able to freely disagree with her co-editors; on the other hand, it sounds like Prof. Zingales views her more as employee, with editorial responsibilities. I do not know what is really the case. What I do know is that none of us, including the faculty, enjoy free speech rights that would interfere with discharge of our core professional responsibilities; nor do any of us, including faculty, enjoy rights of conscientious objection to our core professional responsibilities. The only question here is what Ms. Eyler's are, and that I do not know.

As I learned when I was in Uppsala last August, the situation for academic freedom in Sweden is somewhat mixed. Philosopher Erik Olsson (Lund), whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Swedish Congress of Philosophy, recently called to my attention this report from the primary watchdog group on academic freedom in Sweden. It seems some, but not all of the threats, to academic freedom are coming from other members of the academy, as in the reported case.

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 8--REVISED AND UPDATED WITH THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Legal scholar and theorist Alon Harel (Hebrew U, Jerusalem) writes:

The Israeli academic community has so far been detached from the political disputes over the territories. This is because the Council for Higher Education (Malag Israel) was in charge of Israeli institutions alone (institutions within the green line). The institutions in the Occupied Territories were supervised and managed by a separate entity (Malag Yosh). This institution was political in nature. Its primary purpose was to strengthen and promote the settlement in the territories and consequently the academic credentials of the institutions under its supervision (primarily Ariel University) are much inferior to those of the institutions in Israel.

In a proposed bill, two members of the extreme rightwing party Jewish Home propose to subject the institutions in the territories to the Israeli Council of Higher Education and abolish Malag Yosh. Further using the other urgent political issues facing Israel such as the declaration of President Trump concerning Jerusalem, they wish to pass this bill in a speedy process.

They submitted the bill on Thursday and on Sunday the bill already got the support of the government and will therefore be submitted to the Knesset. A bill that changes the structure of the Israeli Council for Higher Education and is practically a form of annexation of the Occupied Territories is passed in the government few days after the bill was first submitted with no public discussion.

The main threats to academic freedom in the natural sciences in the capitalist democracies come from powerful business interests that disfavor, for profit-seeking reasons, certain discoveries: for example, concerning the human contribution to climate change, to take the most important example in the present, but also findings about the inefficacy of particular pharmaceuticals and medical treatments. Businesses have a strong interest in the correct natural scientific understanding of the causal order of nature, to be sure, since the extraction of profit from nature requires it. At the same time, businesses also have strong interests in concealing certain scientific results that might impede popular acceptance of their business practices and consumption of their products. Academic freedom is a crucial bulwark in favor of discovering truths about the natural world even in the relatively free capitalist societies.

In the human sciences, the issues are usually different: it is, shall we say, rare for international corporations to get exercised about the latest developments in the history of early modern Europe or philosophy of the social sciences. The threats to academic freedom in the human sciences come less from the business sector, and more often from political and religious interest groups whose normative commitments are threatened by the findings of the human sciences. In the United States, for example, external pressure is frequently brought upon universities who try to employ critics of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.[1] But the pressure to violate academic freedom comes from within the universities too. Indeed, some humanists have concocted a whole new metaphysics of “silencing” and “marginalizing” and “violence” to describe the expression of ideas that are offensive and insulting to certain minority groups. For these academic insiders, Marcusian “indiscriminate” toleration in academic discourse is not acceptable, since the expression of ideas that might be hurtful to individuals based on group membership—in particular, membership in groups that have been victims of historical practices of subordination (e.g., African-Americans in the United States, though more recently, transgender individuals)—is alleged to “silence” members of that group and do “violence” to them.

The teacher was clearly well within her pedagogical rights, while the university's response was disgraceful. (That Jordan Peterson is, in some ways, a nut is irrelevant to the use of Peterson's work made by the teacher here, which was wholly appropriate.)

UPDATE: You can listen to an audio of the conversation between the TA and administrators. The administrators don't come off too well, to put it mildly.

The trouble is, many of the academics on the working group tasked with drafting this statement don't actually seem to believe in free expression. Only this can explain the hopeless, incoherent mishmash they came up with. (I am sorry to note that their grammar and syntax are hopeless, too.) No wonder the president, Santa Ono, wanted to shelve it.

"In my view this is a feeble and troubling document that is unworthy of a university that wants to be taken seriously," Paul Russell, a philosophy professor who has been involved in other speech debates on campus, said via e-mail.

(Amusingly, one of the drafters of the failed statement on freedom of expression was none other than our old friend Alan Richardson, the apparatchik posing as a philosopher at UBC, who tried to bully his colleagues into not communicating with me back in 2014, to no avail.)

The UBC draft statement subsequently asks the right questions, such as, "How can we equip students to tackle future challenges, if they are shielded from demanding, provocative thought?" Or, "How can we create significant breakthroughs if entire lines of inquiry are forbidden?"

But after citing these critical goals, it reaches the startling conclusion that the freedom of expression required to achieve them is not of paramount value.

"Freedom of expression does not trump all other rights," the draft says. "In the university community, freedom of expression can only thrive constructively when accompanied by other rights, including the equality rights of equity, diversity and inclusion."

The statement raises worries about "deliberate attempts to create a toxic environment." And it makes the claim that "freedom of expression rests on the potential of making positive, constructive contributions to the university community" – an implication that the school can decide which expression is positive and which isn't.

American universities that have wrestled with the issue have come to a different conclusion: that, as the University of Chicago puts it in its own statement on freedom of expression, "concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community."

I reached out to the UBC philosopher Paul Russell, who kindly gave me permission to share his apt observations about the draft statement:

This is a striking set of stories that bode ill for core academic freedom in Australian universities. Too many Australian universities are already struggling with mindless bureaucrats micro-managing university life; add to that the need for Chinese tuition dollars, and it's a dangerous mix of incentives. Curious to hear from others "on the ground" there about what's going on, so comments are open.

Both make sensible, albeit different, points, and both are worth a look: one by the President of Williams College discussing, among other things, the difference between Charles Murray and Milo what's-his-name; and the other by Erwin Chemerinsky (the Dean of Berkeley Law) and Howard Gillman (Chancellor of UC Irvine) on the real threats to faculty speech (and it isn't coming from the delusional children populating certain campuses)

(Thanks to Katherine Franke for flagging the first, Robert McGarvey for pointing out the second.)

You really could not make this stuff up. Mathematician David Ross (Hawaii), who flagged this for me, wrote: "It seems rather impredicative." (Some of you will need to look that up, as I did, but it is quite apt.) And here's some classic and outrageous Lenny Bruce (ADDENDUM: in fact this is one of the Bruce routines used in the play):

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--VARIOUS UPDATES, AND COMMENTS NOW OPEN

This is a very odd story, which several readers have sent. I suspect there's a bit more to it, but what should be clear is that it can not, legally, be grounds for disciplinary or remedial action at a state university (and should not be at a private university) that a student expressed the views in question. (Orthodox forms of all religions are horrible on matters of human sexuality, surely one can note that fact!) It's made worse here by the fact that the student expressed these views outside of class in an informal setting. This just isn't the university's business. Any readers with more details can e-mail me with additional links.

From the transcript linked on the Volokh Conspiracy post, it's clear that the student was brought in by the chair for a wide variety of problems, many of which were directly relevant to participation in the philosophy program. I think that the question of whether he was specifically threatened/removed for expressing the views about Islam is hard to disentangle from the overall picture that the department was apparently getting of the student. But regardless of what one thinks of the "derogatory comments to other graduate students" component of the problem, the pieces that act like the comments were the only factor (like the one you linked to, I think) are apparently deeply dishonest, at least going by the transcript.

But of course the story would be much less sensational if it went like this: "Student is questioned and apparently removed after a host of disturbing or unprofessional behavior, one component of which was derogatory comments to his colleagues, one example of which seems non-actionable."

ANOTHER: Allin Cottrell, an economist at Wake Forest, writes:

It's clear from the material posted by Joshua Blanchard that there was "more going on" in this case than was suggested by your original link ("very odd story").

Nonetheless, I think Blanchard is minimizing something that really is egregious. Eve Browning, the student's interlocutor in the transcript linked to by Blanchard, makes _great_ play of the student's comment on Islam, qua "an inappropriate thing to say about someoneʼs fiance" (the "someone" being the woman with whom the student was talking, whose fiance is a Muslim).

The student is adamant that his statement was about the beliefs attaching to Islam, and enforced in numerous Islamic countries, and _not at all_ about the fiance. Browning doesn't merely not accept this claim, she seems incapable of understanding the implied difference, and simply states that "that kind of thing is not going to be tolerated in our department." We're left with the impression that "that kind of thing" is just making a statement about a religion that somebody might find offensive for whatever reason.

Read the transcript yourself and see what you think. IMO your first reaction -- "This just isn't the university's business" -- is quite correct. BTW it also appears that Browning was misinformed about some other aspects of the student's alleged misconduct: either that or the student was lying or delusional.

Political philosopher Thom Brooks, who is Dean of Durham Law School in the UK, writes:

I've seen you've posted a link to a news story about a letter from a Tory MP - and junior government whip - requesting information on "European affairs" teaching. Lists of courses can be readily found online and most department websites carry information about individual staff interests. The MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, never stated the purpose for his request although widely believed to be a phishing exercise to find a few illustrations selectively and out of context to whip up faux public outrage - and as indicated by today's Daily Mail front page.

I found especially worrying his wanting not only all teaching materials, but links to lectures being delivered to students. Most universities have some kind of lecture capture technology - and Heaton-Harris wanted to see it all. Students are in classrooms to learn and they should feel free to engage in constructive discussions exploring new ideas without any fear that a government whip will soon be snooping in on the conversation so he can score political points dragging staff and students through the mud -- and of course the request for the material was unlawful anyway. This didn't stop the MP for asking or several universities from agreeing to his request. I find that shameful and thrilled my institution (and others) have not.

What a disgrace that Dalhousie University is conducting a disciplinary investigation of a student for a Facebook comment along the lines of the title of this post. American free speech law has a lot of problems, but on this kind of issue it gets things quite right. As the U.S. Supreme Court said (in upholding the constitution right of a citizen to wear a jacket in a courthouse that said "Fuck the draft" on the back):

[M]uch linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.

During the summer, I noted the bizarre case of an article (on philosophy of love) by Carrie Jenkins, published in Ergo, that devoted one section of the paper to criticizing the (alleged) views of Alan Soble, a leading contributor to the philosophy of love literature--except it turned out the target of the criticism was an anonymous paper posted on the Internet actually written by an undergraduate, that even criticized Soble's views and that Jenkins recklessly attribute to Soble. As a colleague elsewhere said to me, "This is an undergraduate mistake," not the mistake of a professional, or so one might hope. Instead of retracting the paper, Ergo added the following erratum:

The original published version of this paper incorrectly attributed, in §5, an unpublished manuscript to Alan Soble. That manuscript is by an anonymous author who is not Alan Soble. The author regrets the error, and apologizes to Professor Soble for the misattribution.

But section 5 of the article is devoted to refuting the (obviously feeble) arguments of an anonymous undergraduate who was himself/herself criticizing Alan Soble. This erratum is itself a fraud. It should have said that section 5 "of the article refutes the view of an undergraduate on the Internet, views that were carelessly attributed to a professional philosopher, who was defamed by the attribution."

Ergo did itself no credit here, quite apart from my (widely shared) low opinion of the author of the article. A peer-reviewed journal that publishes an article, a major portion of which is devoted to attacking arguments by anonymous undergraduates on the Internet, ought to apologize and remove the article. The on-line, peer-reviewed publication model is terrific, but it needs to involve adult peer-review, and adult corrections. Ergo should do better.

Unbelievable. Will the universities comply? Only collective refusal would be an adequate response. Tenure does not exist in Britain, but academic freedom enjoys statutory protection. This episode, depending on how it unfolds, may test the status of its protections.